Allamanda cathartica L.

• Title

  Allamanda cathartica L.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Allamanda cathartica L.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Allamanda cathartica Cantiva Allamanda Family Apocynaceae Dogbane Family Allamanda cathartica Linnaeus, Mantissa Plantartun 2, 214. 1771. A shrub, sometimes vine-like, with large, yellow flowers, commonly planted for ornament, and occasionally escaped from cultivation to banks, hillsides and roadsides, doubtfully native in Porto Rico, but widely distributed nearly throughout the West Indies and in continental tropical America; it has been introduced into tropical parts of the Old World. The Spanish name Canario , sometimes used for it, is also applied to other yellow-flowered shrubs or trees. Allamanda, dedicated by Linnaeus in 1771, to professor F. Allamand, of Leyden, the species here illustrated typical, includes about 12 species of tropical shrubs and woody vines, with opposite, or verticillate, untoothed leaves, and large flowers, in clusters, at the ends of branches. The calyx is 5-parted, with narrow segments; the funnelform corolla has a long, cylindric tube, expanded into a bell-shaped throat bearing fringed scales within, and 5, broad lobes; the 5 short stamens are borne on the corolla-throat; the ovary is 1-celled, the style very slender, the stigma appendaged by a reflexed membrane. The fruit is a large, flattened, prickly capsule, containing margined, or winged seeds. Allamanda cathartica (cathartic) is a shrub from 1 to 2.5 meters high, the branches often elongated, and vine-like, somewhat hairy when young. The oblong, or oblanceolate, pointed, short-stalked leaves are from 5 to 12 centimeters long. The flowers are several together in the clusters, the calyx-segments from 10 to 16 millimeters long, the bright yellow corolla from 7 to 9 centimeters long, with a limb from 6 to 8 centimeters broad, its lobes rounded. The capsule, when produced, is nearly orbicular, from 4 to 6 centimeters broad, densely covered with prickles from 7 to 15 millimeters long.